Chapter I: Joseph Hickie

"PLEASE, mum, daddy's dead, mammy's blind; will you give me a sixpence to buy a loaf of bread? 'Cause we're most starved, we is."

Mrs. Irvington was just entering her own door, when she was accosted in this manner. The speaker was a boy apparently less than ten years of age, dressed in torn pants which had evidently belonged to a person much older than himself. These were rolled up at the bottom and fastened over the shoulder by one twine suspender. A loose jacket without means of fastening in front, and a worn, felt hat completed his attire.

The lady gazed searchingly in his face, before she replied. He was neither thin nor pale; and she thought his tone had the heartless ring of a professed beggar. At last, she inquired:

"Why do you beg when you seem well able to work and earn bread?"

"I can't get work, mum," he answered with a whine.

"I will give you work. At the end of an hour, you shall have some breakfast; and if you work well till night, I will give you a shilling."

The boy did not look very much pleased with this flattering proposal, but did not know how to get off. So, he asked rather sullenly:

"What kind of work is it?"

"I will show you. Go to the lower door, and wait till I meet you."

Back of the house there was a large yard paved with brick that had an opening upon a back street, and through this opening, a load of chips from the ship-yard had been tipped up. There they lay close to the back gate, and she wished to have them removed to the cellar while the dry weather continued.

To this pile Mrs. Irvington introduced the young beggar, saying in a cheerful tone, "If you work smart, you can carry them in before night. I can assure you that bread which is earned by one's own labor is much sweeter than the bread of charity."

Joseph Hickie, for that was the boy's name, stared at the pile of oak chips in dismay. Indeed, his distress was so apparent, that the lady was obliged to turn her face away to conceal a smile.

"I don't think I can do it, mum," Jo complained, whining, "they are too big."

"How old are you?"

"I'm turned nine."

"Well, I have a little son not much past eight, and he carried the last load. I think if you try, you can carry this with perfect ease. Wait a minute, I will let you take his cart. That will make the work seem like play."

Jo's face brightened, as she drew from the cellar a nicely painted wagon or truck, and held the handle out to him. The house was set up high, the kitchen being in the basement. The cellar door opened out upon the paved yard, and was on a level with it.

"Fill the cart full," said the lady in a cheerful tone, "and then empty the load into the corner where you see the other chips. In one hour I will come and see how much you have done, and give you some breakfast."

Mrs. Irvington was a lady who watched for opportunities to do good. Not only was her husband rich, but she had money in her own right. And had she chosen to do so, she might have sat in a rocking-chair all the morning with servants to wait upon her, and have rode in her carriage all the afternoon. But she did not choose thus to waste her life. She read in her Bible that Jesus Christ the Lord of glory left his seat at his Father's right hand, came to earth, healed the sick, cured the blind, suffered from hunger, and thirst and cold, and at last gave up his life for the good of others. And she, trying to imitate his example, was glad to give up her own comfort if she might do good to some poor suffering creature.

She was the head manager or directress of an orphan asylum, not far from her own home; and she had a district or ward, which she regularly visited to find out who was suffering for want of the necessaries of life.

Long ago she had learned that those who talk the most of their poverty, are not the greatest sufferers. There are those who for want of work or for want of the strength to labor, will pinch and turn this way and that, and almost starve before they will make known their wants.

Mr. Irvington was a ship-builder and ship-owner. He had a large yard where many men were employed in hewing huge timbers, of which the keels and rudders and frames of the great vessels were built. There were men too whose work it was to cart off the large, hard-wood chips to the houses of those who had bought them. Mr. Irvington was in full sympathy with his wife in all her plans for doing good; and many a dollar had he lost by the men or boys she had sent to him for employment.

"It would be money in my pocket, to give these beggars a dollar and send them off," he used to say with a laugh; "but it's a whim of my wife to make beggars work. One in a hundred perhaps will continue to labor; but most of them find it easier to beg their food than to earn it."